With a Kate Rusby album, you can usually expect a fair share of drowned sailors, grief-stricken widows, heartbroken lovers and doomed drinkers. Run-of-the-mill human misery wrapped up in a beautiful, clear, sweet Yorkshire voice.

Rusby, one of the defining voices of English folk, has done as much as anyone to revive forgotten gems of songs but for the first time, with her new release Make The Light, she has recorded an album entirely of her own compositions, a significant "departure" as she readily admits.

It's a departure in spirit too. The arrival last year of her first baby - Daisy Delia - and marriage to Damien O'Kane (whose guitar, tenor guitar, tenor banjo and vocals grace the album) have prompted, well, optimism. Pregnancy and spoon-feeding rusks to Daisy were a "creative time", said the 36-year-old.

Rusby said: "The album is gritty, some of it pretty and some of it a bit wacky - but we had fun making it."

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The fun comes across with some highly accomplished musicianship from what is a new band - and any fan of the diatonic accordion will appreciate Julian Sutton's contribution to the overall class. Add to that the brass quintet of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and you have freshness and quality throughout.

The uncluttered production values that Rusby -and brother Joe - have achieved allow the emotions of her singing to shine through but the songs themselves mainly stand the test - she writes within the tradition and the opening track, The Wishing Well, could be mistaken for an established folk song.

Let Them Fly has more modern concerns ("for the politician whom this may concern") and enjoyable song that it is, the lyrics "We will never be charmed by the charmless" are more 'filled-out complaint card' than full-blown Dick Gaughan anger.

Rusby has never shied away from doing 'modern' cover versions - her The Village Green Preservation Society (Kinks) from the album Awkward Annie was a delight and her take on Iris Dement's Our Town terrific - but it's normally gloom she does so convincingly. Her previous cover of Richard Thompson's Withered And Died, for example, is achingly melancholic.

But this time she is definitely of a good cheer, as on the rousing Walk The Road and Four Stars, her first love song.

Rusby said: "The general theme is hope and optimism. I fancied it. I love traddy songs and interpreting them but Jennifer Saunders suggested doing an album of my own. The next one might be traddy again."